Leave Me Alone: Ch 2

The bed squealed in pain beneath me, shuddering under the burden of our two bodies moving. I watch myself move away, separate from my body, struggling, as if in a third person the pain wouldn’t touch me. I reach for the hem of my shirt at the same time he does, only our hands are working in different directions, pulling up and down, getting nearly nowhere. I watch myself as my face contorts into odd images of panic and sadness.

The man on top of me, my stepfather, smacks me and tries to pry my shirt off again; I comply. To his disappointment, a second shirt is revealed. I can feel the feelings creeping up behind me. The me on the bed longs to have her clothes back; the pants discarded in the hall and the long-sleeved shirt next to the bed. It had been a long time since I’ve seen myself bare. I’d forgotten that my legs were long and graceful. I looked at my hands, covering my face in shame, and realized again that they were soft and elegantly shaped. Then I saw my stepfather above me, his eyes full of lust and longing. Watching his hand rise to my breast raises vomit to my throat and pain into my chest.

Finally I squeeze my eyes shut. I shouldn’t have closed my eyes. The feelings and emotions are coming back. The me that is on the bed is joining together again with the me that is my escape from direct contact. He grinds into my pelvis, the fabric of his jeans rubbing rudely into the soft places of my thighs. His hands grip my hips and move me in a rhythmic way along with his body. The palms of my hands press into my face and my fingers dig into my eyes. I wish I could gouge them out. Vomit spills into my mouth and for a moment I’m thankful he’s playing with my hips instead of kissing me, because I know he’d hurt me for the distaste on my tongue.

I wish my senses would die. I wish I was paralyzed, so I couldn’t feel anything, so I’d be left unaware. The feeling in his jeans tightens and stretches and I know he’s reaching his peak. My heart turns cold. I don’t want to know these things. I don’t want to know his body. But I can hear his breathing above me and I can feel him and the senses of my body only amplify them. Go away I tell him in my head. Go away! I play a game with myself to ignore him and myself. I imagine that I’m dancing that I’m swaying my hips to a song and not him. I imagine that I am alone. Happy…

I am in a third person, dancing alone, happy that he has finally left my bed.

Hours passed as I fainted into my sheets, wishing that I’d never wake up.


She sat up in bed, awake again, starring out of her window into a sky of red turning into an inky black. Her hands hung limply at her sides, palms facing up to the ceiling in mercy. Blood clung to the inside of her mouth, the inside of her cheeks chewed raw by her own nervous teeth. Laura found that at her worst, she chewed the inside of her mouth till it bled. Her door was closed again and everything back in place like it always seemed. Like she wished it would be.